


Faraday Cage and the Stark Raving Burners

by dixiehellcat



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [11]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Burning Man, Gen, Pre-Iron Man 1, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Young Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26109646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: For Tony Stark Flash Bingo, card 020, fill 'blueberries'!In 1996, Tony Stark hears about a wild party in the high desert and decides to drop in.  Two years later, he finally does, and learns a little something about himself.
Relationships: Tony Stark & Original Characters
Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1765129
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Tony Stark Flash Bingo





	Faraday Cage and the Stark Raving Burners

**Author's Note:**

> The word 'playa' in this story is the Spanish word for beach, and is pronounced PLY-ah, fyi.

It started in 1996. At least, Tony thought so. Honestly, since he spent much of that decade impaired due to assorted substances, he wasn’t altogether certain when the party, out of the literal hundreds of parties he hosted, starred at, or crashed, happened. He was fairly sure it was in California, though, and he did remember the conversation with somebody just about as fucked up as he was. “Burning Man? Never heard of it.”

“Ohhh man,” slurred the guy semi-flirting with him. “This thing in the desert, it’s crazy. Way up in the heights, Black Rock country. I’ve never been, but they say it’s a fuckin’ bacchanalia. Mud orgies, drum circles, drive-by shooting gallery, a giant idol they burn down—so the name, heh, see, cute. My ex and her sister went last summer, and said a guy strapped explosives to himself and his wife and her old man, and then set ‘em off…”

“Blowing shit up! Sounds right up my alley,” Tony said. His curiosity piqued, he made a few phone calls once he sobered up. As it happened, he had actually been to the playa, the ancient dry lake bed in Nevada where the fest was held, once, as a teenager, when Howard had hauled him along to watch a rocket-powered car break the land speed record. He didn’t remember much about the place, other than it was in the ass crack of nowhere and they had helicoptered in and out. 

He made a few more phone calls. _Wait, there are NO hotels?_ After some consideration, he rang up an aging rocker of his acquaintance, recently off the road, and offered to bankroll their next tour in return for the use of their bus and driver for a few days. He met them in Reno, hopped aboard with some primo high explosives, and kicked back with a six-pack to imagine how impressed this bunch of hippies was gonna be when he rolled up and set off some of Stark Industries’ finest.

They were not impressed. In fact, much to his shock, they wouldn’t even let his mobile bachelor pad past the decrepit old trailer that passed as a front gate. It was bad enough he was sure he had rattled two fillings loose driving up the dusty pig path to get there (there was some joke about what it meant regarding your destination, when the directions included ‘turn off the paved road’, but he was too wasted to remember it). The guy who stopped them glared from under his cowboy hat and would not be moved, even when Tony waved a wad of cash in his face. “Sorry, kid, we don’t sell tickets here. You don’t have one, you don’t get in.”

With much swearing (from and at him), the driver got the bus turned around and back the hundred-plus miles to Reno. Tony passed out in a bunk and woke up pissed. He sent the bus and driver back, but kept his promise to the rocker. Starks keep their word.

He forgot about it, pretty much, for a good while after that. Through the grapevine, he heard someone had died while he was riding on a cloud of dust there and back again the previous year; that it had been moved to somebody’s farm; that the cops had seized all their funds. _Shame to have missed it_ , he thought and figured it was done and dusted (ha, sometimes he made himself laugh).

Imagine Tony’s surprise, when the next year he was in San Francisco on SI business and heard, not only that Burning Man was still going and back on the playa, but that there was a big art exhibit connected with it being held there in town. Just for the hell of it, he went downtown before flying back to Malibu, to have a look. Cars decorated until almost unrecognizable paraded down city streets, followed by dancing nuns whirling flaming hula hoops. A gallery was full of photos and sculptures, but in the parking lot next door stood a giant angular figure a good forty feet tall built of lumber and neon.

So that was the Burning Man. The sight reawakened half-drowned memories of the one glimpse he had gotten, hanging out the door of the borrowed Silver Eagle trying to Tony-Fucking-Stark his way past the asshole in the hat. A distant city had risen out of nothing in the distance, a spare stick-like effigy looming over it like some primal deity or projection of the collective unconscious (yes, he did so stay awake through some of his psych classes at MIT, and not just because the TA was hot, even though he was, so shut up Rhodey). Hints of drumming and music and high wild laughter had drifted up on the faint dusty desert breeze. They were like ghosts, called forth now, and they would not leave him alone. He talked to one of the guys in charge of the exhibit, offered to sponsor some of the artists, asked about ticket sales, and left with one in hand. Why, he didn’t know, but sometimes you just didn’t argue with an impulse. (Sometimes, he knew, he _should_ , but that was another story.)

Tony read up on the thing, even found some info on the Internet—he’d been using it since it was the old military ARPAnet, but non-defense-connected civvies were starting to catch on. As usual when something snagged his attention, he flung himself headlong into it, learned every bit of intel he could find—he was an engineer, how could he expect a project to work without some base of knowledge? What he found was intriguing. Yeah, there was sex and drugs and liquor aplenty (no guns though, sadly; those had been banned), but it was also art and music and some kind of spiritual something. He wasn’t particularly interested in the latter, but whatever floated people’s boats, and might make a positive contribution to him getting laid, suited him fine. 

He got an idea. He bought a small used RV, not great looking but with a solid frame and mechanics, and souped it up. The generator was as tiny and quiet as he could make it (someday he might figure out how to shrink Howard’s huge arc reactor, but for now, this would do) and it ran a powerful climate control setup and a decent sound system. The cabin was tight, and the bed was comfortable, if barely big enough to entertain one guest at a time. The exterior could have easily been polished up to look brand new, but that wasn’t part of Tony’s plan. He wanted it slightly scruffy looking, so he could pull this off on the QT. 

For that matter, he decided his plan might work even better if he looked a bit scruffy himself. He quit shaving the weekend before his planned escape, and endured Obie’s grumbles. If word got out that Tony Stark had been sighted at a hippie love-in, Obie would be furious. Not great for the business when that happened, but it was pretty fun to watch the old guy melt down. More of a concern was making sure a bunch of anti-military free-love types didn't recognize him and go postal on his ass. 

The following Wednesday, Tony put his plan into action. He got the RV (and a couple of extra goodies) shipped to Reno and parked at a hotel; hopped his jet up there to meet it; and had his PA (who was on his last week—he really needed to find an assistant who would stay more than a few months before quitting) block out the next five days on his schedule, under the guise of researching investment opportunities. After a decent night’s sleep in the suite he’d booked for the next week, he threw on his oldest workshop clothes, hooked a custom trailer he had built to his butt, and hit the road.

The playa was as barren as a moonscape, but a moonscape covered with cars and campers and true flower-child-style converted school buses, ringed by bare mountains surprisingly appealing in their severity. Ticket offered and torn, Tony navigated to a spot, parked, and hoped he had retained the RV Boondocking 101 he had pulled an all-nighter to learn. While he fumbled around checking the systems, a voice behind him said, “Hey, new guy!”

Turning, he found three people. A pale skinny man in eyeliner and a flowing skirt had one arm around a curvy dark woman wearing a top hat and tux jacket over daisy dukes and a sports bra. “Um, hi,” he offered as the third, an older bearded man grinned and threw up a hand.

“What’s yer name?” the beardy asked. Tony hesitated and racked his brain for an alias. 

Fortunately, he was saved when the woman laughed. “You really are a newbie. Bet you don’t even have a playa name yet.” He blinked. “Playa names,” she explained. “Sometimes people make up their own, but more often somebody else gives it to you. It’s another way to distance from the default world, while we’re here. I’m Tulita Pepsi, this,” she poked the thin man, “is Wilma Dikfit. And that’s Sam Stone,” she finished with a nod to the bearded one.

“Oh. So we’re using our made-up names,” Tony grinned. He could work with this. “I’m Clint Eastwood, then.”

The thin man, Wilma, cackled. “No you’re not. Definitely not. Closest you’re getting to that is the Virgin with No Name, for the moment.” 

Tony tried to look offended. “I haven’t been a virgin since I was thirteen,” he huffed; but really, around here, he was, so why argue. It gave him a little more cred to the inept-new-kid routine, although, if he was honest with himself, that role was unnervingly easy to slide into.

The three took him under their collective wing and invited him back to their camp to hang out, about the time he had the camper secured and a light rain began to fall. It kept the dust he’d heard about damped down, and he suspected he’d spend most of whatever time he stayed here in the RV, when he wasn’t partying, fucking, or possibly sleeping or eating. The dust could be a positive, though; Wilma kept giving him sideways looks as though trying to place him, so a coating of windborne playa might help conceal his identity. He went along though, figuring he could get himself oriented, then bid them goodbye and strike out to swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh.

His new friends’ camp was several tents in a group, with a sign hammered into the ground out front proclaiming them the Stark Raving Burners. The irony of the name was not lost on Tony. As he started to step into the central tent behind Tulita, a breeze carried a piece of litter past. Wilma lunged for it. “Yours?” Tony asked.

Wilma shook his head. “MOOP!” Sam declared. “Matter Out of Place. We only get to come here because we pledged the feds we’d clean up after ourselves. Leave no trace. It’s kind of one of our guiding principles. Larry, he started the whole Burning Man thing, keeps saying he’s gonna write ‘em all down someday. We’ll see about that,” he added and laughed. “Anyway, yeah, lesson one, virgin, is pick shit up, even if it’s not yours.”

Black Rock was Bureau of Land Management territory, Tony recalled from those long-ago land speed trials, so the requirement made sense. He settled in the minimally dusty group hangout tent and Wilma tossed him a beer. He started to fish for his wallet but Tulita smacked his hand. “No, you don’t. No payments. Decommodification. People trade, or some just give and don’t even expect a trade. Whatever.” More irony, for him, whose whole life was focused around building things and selling them, to be sitting here while strangers argued him out of paying them for a drink.

“Fine,” he said. “Be right back.” He found his way back to his cozy little turtle’s shell, cool and high-tech and safe from rain and dust and awkward human interactions, but only stayed long enough to check on his traveling companion in the trailer and dig a big bag of fresh blueberries out of the cooler. “Here,” he said and tossed the bag to Sam when he returned to the tent. “Decommodification.” 

They laughed and he flopped down on an air mattress. The three shared their barely-cool beers, and some excellent weed, but seemed as circumspect about their ‘default world’ selves as Tony. An unguarded comment on his part tipped them he was an engineer, and he learned Wilma and Tulita were too, and even worked together at the same company in southern California. Sam was a teacher in Frisco who dabbled in art; he had coaxed his pals up to the high desert once, and they hadn’t missed it since. 

Mindful he needed to watch his tongue, Tony got just enough of a pleasant buzz to relax him, and just listened for a change. Listened, and looked, and that was what led him to spot the plastic equipment box half-shoved under a cot, the stenciled Stark Industries logo on its side unmistakable. Of course, he groaned to himself, out of several thousand wild folk in one place, he would stumble upon probably the only ones who might have seen him face to face at some point in the past. They didn’t seem to have caught on, though, so he casually rubbed some more dust into his scraggly beard and tried not to worry.

When the drizzle stopped, Sam offered a tour. Big tents, spaced between camps on a semicircular grid, served as cafes, bars, lounges and theaters. People got around on bikes, rickshaws, and more of those wildly decorated ‘art cars’, because the place really was half the size of a small town. Tony was thrilled to find one of the only two things sold in Black Rock City was coffee (the other was ice, at a spot aptly called Antarctica) and settled with a cup under the biggest tent, Center Camp, while Sam went off to confer with a buddy about his art installation. 

He idly pored over a flyer headed BLACK ROCK GAZETTE, printed with articles that reinforced the principles the Stark Ravers had shared, but was halted while reading an amusing sidebar about how to do laundry in a plastic bag. _roll bag up from closed end and SQUEEZE up to open end (like Tony Stark squeezing another nickel out of a defense contract)_. He gulped, got briefly mad, and then decided _fuck that_. Someday, he’d mention offhandedly in an interview with a prestige magazine that he had slummed at Burning Man and not been recognized, and then they’d be…Wait, what the hell did he care what any of them thought? He was here to have fun, drink, see the sights, get laid. If it took going incognito, then so be it. 

He drained his coffee, returned the cup and found Sam. “Gonna go browse,” he said.

"No spectators!" Sam cautioned. "You gotta get involved, virgin."

"Oh, rest assured, I will." With a cheery wave, Tony pulled the same confidence he wore into every SI press conference and every high-end rave around him, and strolled off in search of naked people to get involved with. It didn’t take long to find them, but they weren’t necessarily throwing themselves at him; most of them were just doing their own things, be that playing golf (really? Golf? At Burning Man?), admiring a giant metal tree that doubled as a fountain, or making out in a space between two tents. Tony landed at a place called Bianca’s Smut Shack that more than lived up to its name, offering both grilled cheese sandwiches and blow jobs without charge. He took advantage of both, and left with gifts, a scarf and goggles hung around his neck for future duststorms. (Duststorms. What the fuck had he let his pride get him into?)

The nakey was out there, yeah, and the booze and the dope; but so were techies building amazing things, like battling robots, a giant Tesla coil, and a chapel twenty feet tall constructed of recycled plastic the artist had apparently hauled all the way out here. The experience was already overwhelming and only got more so as night started to fall. Tony realized he didn’t have a flashlight and the fucking desert was _dark_. It was beautiful, too, though. The fountain tree morphed into a flamethrower, the chapel glowed from within like solid stained glass while poets declaimed from the stage inside, and a giant tentacled thing rolled stately around the fringes flashing and spitting random samples of sounds. All over the playa, the glint of illuminated art pieces made the breathtaking scatter of stars overhead feel like a mirror of the flat ground, with the neon-limned Man hovering over all. 

Somehow, he found his way back to the Stark Ravers' camp, unzipped the hangout’s front and fell inside onto that air mattress. The next thing he saw was watery morning light, and the first thing he heard was Tulita chirping, “Is Santa back this year? Look, he brought us a virgin!”

Following a breakfast with the Stark Ravers of pop-tarts and beer, he decided to put the second part of his master plan into effect. He located his RV, moved it into a spot where the Ravers said it could help block their camp from blowing sand, and opened the small trailer on the back. “Got something I thought might fit into the whole artsy-techie thing here,” he offered. “Like you said, no spectators, everybody’s expected to participate, so…” With a flourish, Tony unfolded the sides of the trailer, and DUM-E woke up and began to excitedly look around and tweet.

The Ravers were dumbfounded, especially once Tony coaxed the bot, on the detachable caterpillar tracks he had made, down a short ramp and onto the hard-packed playa itself. Wilma and Tulita fired tech questions, and Sam praised the aesthetic. When they started to walk around, DUM-E accompanied them, fairly squealing at every new sight. And people _loved_ him. Girls stopped in their tracks to talk to him; he petted their hair with his claw, and Tony had to scold him when he got too curious and began to tug at their bikini straps or try to steal their hats. Guys were equally admiring, and squealed and giggled almost as much. He ended up with directions to more camps and offers of more free sex than he could have taken up in a month. It was basically like the proverbial guy who gets a dog to score. “You ought to be my wingman for life,” Tony told the bot as they returned to the camper and he plugged him in and raised the sides. “Get some rest, you’re gonna be a busy boy tomorrow.”

While he contemplated a nice shower and his soft if small bed, Wilma walked over. “You good, virgin? Heard you talking to somebody.”

“Oh, just DUM-E. I, um, sometimes I do better with machines than people.” What the hell had possessed him to say that? Never mind that it was true at times, that just made it more pathetic.

Wilma just nodded, though. “Think I’ve seen him, in some old pictures, with a young Tony Stark. Any chance I’m right?” Before Tony could close his open mouth, the man barreled on. “No matter what Obadiah Stane says, you bastards have no right to dictate what employees do on their off time. So, why’d you follow us here, _Mister Stark_?”

“I.” Tony’s brain melted down for all of a second or two. He’d done what he wanted, after all; he’d been to Burning Man, and he’d half planned to blow his own cover once he left, so why not say fuck you and leave now? All that stood aside, though, at the impact of one statement. “Trying to dictate what people do off the clock? What the fuck? No, really, nobody’s doing that at Stark Industries, and if they are they need their dicks fed to them. That’s some max-ordinal level bullshit.” Wilma took a step back, obviously surprised that Tony hadn’t denied his identity. “Look, I’m not here in any fucking official capacity, I’m not following you, hell, I’d be embarrassed to say I don’t know who you are, if we didn’t have so damn many people working at SI. Obie handles the business end, so I can dream up the new toys that keep us going. I’m just here because I heard it was cool, and because—fuck, just for a couple of days, I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to _be_ Tony Stark. But, yeah, okay, fine, I’ll go. And I’ll find out what the hell is going on at SI, because me personally, I don’t care if you run naked up and down the Santa Monica Pier on your own time, as long as you show up and do your job, so—”

“Hey.” Wilma’s voice didn’t rise, but he put his hands out. “Dude. It’s okay. If you’re being straight with me, it’s all good. We don’t make a lot of noise about where we work either, because there are folks who would give us the evil eye, but the ideal is, default world doesn’t exist here, and what happens on the playa stays on the playa. Hence playa names. So, yeah, you’re welcome, like everybody is welcome. Radical inclusion, it’s kind of a thing here too. Besides, I want to talk to your buddy here some more,” he added with a grin and a cock of his head toward the trailer. “Let’s grab a bite, and go see some more art. Oh, and watch out for the people with the eyeballs bobbing on their heads, they’re press.”

That seemed to be the end of it. Tony walked back to the Ravers’ camp with Wilma chatting about wanting to go see the Wizard of Ass, whatever that was. Tulita and Sam met them, and the four passed around chips and salsa, then wandered the streets of Black Rock City. It rained again, and people danced in it and splashed around like kids—well, like kids Tony had seen in movies; he admitted under his breath to Wilma he’d never actually gotten to do it himself, whereupon he immediately got dragged out into it. 

When they stumbled back to the Ravers’ camp, it was whothefuckknew o’clock at night and dance parties were in full swing. Somewhere in the course of the evening, Tulita and Sam had found out who Tony was, and wonder of wonders, neither seemed to give a shit. He could not remember ever having laughed so much or felt so free. It might have happened, sometime when he was too fucked up to remember it, but he doubted it, and if you couldn’t remember, an argument could be made that it didn’t count. He said good night all around and looked to get his bearings to return to his RV. “Night, Virgin,” Wilma said.

“No,” Tulita objected. “Faraday Cage.”

“Come again?” Tony asked.

“Your playa name. It’s Faraday Cage.”

She spoke with such conviction, and Tony had to admit, she was right. A Faraday cage was a shield, a protection. It was high tech, and in a way, it was what he was trying to do here: make an identity for himself, however fleeting, that was not created by his father, or the media, or by anybody looking at him from the outside. “They’re gifts, you said, playa names?” he asked. 

“Subject to your own radical self-expression,” she nodded. “Another of our principles. I can offer a gift, but I need to honor your choice whether to take it.” 

“Oh, hell yeah, I’m taking it. I’m just thinking now, you’re a witch or something, because, too on point.” They all laughed, but it wasn’t a brittle society titter, or the raucous howls of a party spinning out of control greased by too many substances, or a mocking flock of cackles. “Okay. Gonna try this again, then. Night, you guys.”

“Night, Cage,” they chorused quietly, and Tony felt, in a crazy but no less real way, recognized.

**Author's Note:**

> Everything Tony sees in this story actually was present at the 1998 version of Burning Man! That includes the article in the Black Rock Gazette, though it names Howard Hughes, but since Stan Lee cited Hughes as a big influence on his creation of Tony, it made sense that in this verse, his name would replace that one.
> 
> This is Tony's first visit to Burning Man, but far from his last. I hope to write another chapter or two dealing with how the identity and acceptance he finds there influences him in later years, both personally and professionally. (I have ideas...muahaha)
> 
> Special loving shoutout to sreppub and yesmooshoe for helping me come up with playa names! also thanks to faithwho of the Burning Man subreddit for suggestions, including opening my eyes to the divine madness that was Bianca's. 0_0 lol


End file.
